Would you please download and try PMS 1.15.0.659 ?
I made a correction to the dependencies.
- Uninstall the package (do not purge)
- Install the new
Doing it this way releases any accidental dependencies.
So
apt-get remove plexmediaserver
wget https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server-new/1.15.0.659-9311f93fd/debian/plexmediaserver_1.15.0.659-9311f93fd_amd64.deb
dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.15.0.659-9311f93fd_amd64.deb
?
Yes. Or on the plex.tv/downloads page
Installed without issues. ExportTools is running fine at the moment. Let’s see how it behaves over time. I’ll report back!
Nope! Still won’t play media. “Could not retrieve playlist item” or similar. Logs are enclosed. Plenty of “EventSource: Failure in ParseMessage (0 - Success).” 
I don’t know what else you have going on there but:
GZIP 60465ms 884 bytes (pipelined: 3)
Feb 15, 2019 13:14:50.736 [0x7f0830ff9700] WARN - Waited one whole second for a busy database.
Feb 15, 2019 13:14:51.215 [0x7f0862ffd700] WARN - Waited one whole second for a busy database.
Feb 15, 2019 13:14:51.332 [0x7f08db7fe700] DEBUG - [com.plexapp.agents.lastfm] Plug-in is starting, waiting 133 seconds for it to complete.
Feb 15, 2019 13:14:51.948 [0x7f0830ff9700] ERROR - Thread: Uncaught exception running async task which was spawned by thread 0x7f08e97e4700: sqlite3_statement_backend::loadOne: database is locked
Feb 15, 2019 13:13:42.579 [0x7f08eb7e8700] INFO - Plex Media Server v1.15.0.659-9311f93fd - Debian GNU/Linux PC x86_64 - build: linux-x86_64 debian - GMT 01:00
Feb 15, 2019 13:13:42.579 [0x7f08eb7e8700] INFO - Linux version: 8 (jessie), language: en-US
Feb 15, 2019 13:13:42.579 [0x7f08eb7e8700] INFO - Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5540 @ 2.53GHz
A 10 year old CPU with 4000 Passmarks is going to have limitations.
How much else is happening on the system>
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5540+%40+2.53GHz&id=1245
About 0.01 load average before installing plex. Now it hogs the CPU quite good from time to time. Again, the CPU is good enough for hundreds of mp3’s streamed simultainosly, now it can’t do even one with plex.
How many items do you have indexed, including photos & music?
SSDs in use or HDDs for PMS?
RAM?
LiveTV/DVR configured ?
About 1300 movies, 3000 TV episodes and 14000 songs.
Used to be on SSD but plex database swallowed >40 GB so I had to move it. raid-6 HDDs. Capable of a few hundred MB/s, but slow seek of course.
24 GB of RAM. 95 % unused.
No LiveTV nor DVR configured.
Are those RAID HDDs local or over the LAN ?
Local.
Do you ever user the chapter thumbnails?
If not, I suggest turning them off and removing the ones it has created already.
With that small quantity of files, you should easily fit within a few GB of storage
No. How do I turn them off?
instead of continuining to try to bandaid an old, unsafe and unsupported OS, you could have likely resolved your issues by backing up the plex data, wiping the os and doing a clean install of the current debian os.
Too much custom configured and invested to wipe anyting. But I will do a full backup and try a dist-upgrade at some point since plex is still fighting me. I do however not buy into the situation. PMS on Debian 6 was a supported configuration and it was working so if plex and Debian “moved on” from there, I don’t see why the software needs to magically phone home and ask if it should start misbehaving as opposed to keep doing what it was doing.
it doesn’t have anything to do with phone home.
yes and well my windows 95 machine was working well past the point that the programs on it could no longer get updates because windows 95 itself was no longer supported or updated.
in this day and age especially, with the internet and virus and malware and security screw ups and updates, you must come to terms with keeping your system up to date.
You obviously wanted to keep plex up to date (otherwise you should have kept using the same plex that last worked well for you), why haven’t you kept your OS up to date?
Further, plex will outgrow your hardware.
Your hard drives will fill up.
Your cpu can become too slow to support the number of users or the type of content.
The database and metadata becomes so large to need more RAM and CPU power to keep up and be responsive.
No, I did not upgrade first nor did I want to upgrade anything which was working. The original PMS was working well up until one day when it simply didn’t with no upgrades, hence phone-home or pre-programmed planned obsolescence. AFTER that, I tried to upgrade PMS to see if the problem would go away, but it has not.
Type of content hasn’t changed nor number of users. I have 95 % of the RAM installed unused and several CPU cores to spare, still PMS can’t stream a single MP3 file.
Seems that the go to solution for everyone here is to buy new hardware even for trivial tasks which ran fine on 15 year old equipment just a few months ago. I will give this a medium effort by eventually upgrade the server, but if the problem persists, stop paying for a service which isn’t working. Luckily I did not pay for a lifetime subscription.
shrug, it is not plex’s fault you didn’t keep your OS up to date.
Dev already told you 2+ weeks ago that your OS is TWO versions behind what minimum is supported and has has been for the last 2 years.
Debian 9 is the current version (stretch) and there are 2 other versions in development (buster, and sid).
Debian 6 was end of life in 2016.
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases
Don’t get mad at plex because your system isn’t current.
Being Linux, and with the How-To I created precisely for the purpose of making a full backup of one’s Plex installation painlessly, Customization of PMS is completely covered.
To reiterate, Debian 6 was never supported. A former Plex Ninja did it, with company permission, from the kindness of his heart. He has since moved on.
